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Why the Zetema Project ?

Our knowledgeable and talented team of Zetema Staff and Fellows are committed to creating a forum that stimulates the productive exchange of diverse, expert opinion on the many facets of the US healthcare system.

About Us

There’s widespread agreement that the US healthcare system is broken. And the discussion about how to fix it isn’t much better. The national healthcare conversation is highly polarized, poorly informed, and dominated by competing special interests. The challenges are too complex for soundbites. Yet it’s important to understand these difficult issues in order to address them.

What’s the best way to learn about a complex issue? One approach is to talk with an expert. You can learn a lot that way, but it’s hard to argue with an expert if you’re not one yourself. Here’s a better way: find two or more experts who disagree, and listen to them hash things out. That way you hear the most compelling facts, research, arguments, and counter-arguments related to the topic. Then you can draw your own conclusions.

Enter the Zetema Project. We recruit healthcare leaders from all across the political spectrum and the major healthcare stakeholder groups. We convene them and facilitate robust debates about key problems and potential solutions. But unlike other groups, we don’t make recommendations. Instead, we distill down the essential points and rebuttals so you can understand and evaluate them. We don’t digest the arguments for you. We think you’re smart enough to do that for yourself.

Why do we do this? Because we believe that the US healthcare system needs substantial improvement, and that a well-informed national conversation is essential for our public and private sector leaders to make the best decisions. Healthcare isn’t just another industry. It’s critical to our health and well-being. Our panelists have widely diverging views on what should be done, but all realize that our citizens must understand and support any major changes to our system. We hope to inform and engage Americans in a more productive discussion that will help bring about a healthcare system that works better for us all.